Original reporting on little-known U.S. government funded foreign aid projects, so-called "drug war" initiatives, and overseas business subsidies.

09/08/2013

Obama Can't Stop Spending — In Kenya!

The Obama administration is seeking additional U.S. taxpayer
funds to provide more health services to Kenyans through a massive assistance
program that has already grown so “rapidly and exponentially” the U.S.
government now needs help from outside contractors to oversee it.

A Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm known for its work
with the United Nations Development Program, the European Union and the World
Bank has been hired by the administration to monitor, analyze and improve the
foreign-assistance program, known as the Evaluation Services and Program
Support endeavor.

The U.S. Agency for International Development has awarded a
contract potentially worth $23 million to International Business &
Technical Consultants, Inc., or IBTCI, which will provide such services when
called upon.

The new arrangement allows USAID/Kenya’s Office of
Population and Health Programs, or OPH, and USAID/East Africa’s Regional Health
and HIV/AIDS Office, or RHH, to issue separate work orders to the consulting
firm on an indefinite quantity, indefinite delivery basis.

The initiative emphasizes “Kenya is a priority country for
The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and receives
significant funding to address HIV/AIDS and related problems. Similarly,
resources available from the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) assure
continued funding for malaria programs.”

Despite this consistent flow of funding, Kenya wants more.

USAID says key target groups among the Kenyan population
have reached plateaus or have seen declines in measurements of Kenyans’ health.

Kenya consequently intends to “seek additional funding to
balance the current program to increase coverage for family planning, maternal,
neonatal, and child health, nutrition/food security, and safe water and
hygiene.”

This agency unit likewise is working “in close
collaboration” with U.S. government counterparts at the Centers for Disease
Control and the departments of Defense and State “to accelerate the scale-up of
proven high-impact and low-cost public health programming.”

Although USAID admittedly cannot adequately manage the
voluminous initiatives it has launched in Kenya, cost-wise overall aid dropped
from a high of $830 million in 2009 to $460 million in 2013.

Despite the administration’s emphasis on Kenyan health
programs, there is another component to the initiative: the implementation of
Kenya’s new constitution, which requires greater decentralization of the
national government and expansion of the county governmental system.

While the overarching goal “is to focus on the establishment
of a sustainable national health system for all Kenyans,” it also must maintain
“strong linkages” to other governmental and societal sectors “that impact
health but have conventionally been perceived as outside of the control of the
health sector.”

U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor has reported over the past year
on various components of Obama’s Kenyan assistance scheme.

Those exclusive Monitor reports (some which originally
appeared via WND.com and were reprinted here by the author) led USAID to
eliminate public access to a critical planning document governing a U.S.
propaganda initiative known as the USAID/Kenya Strategic Communications Plan
2012-2013.

Publicly available documents revealing the Obama administration’s
unwieldy portfolio of Kenyan projects – which includes a formal plan to
manipulate Kenyan and global media – were removed from a federal contracting
database, the Monitor discovered.

The agency likewise revamped one of its solicitations for
industry proposals, modifying the project to make it an East African rather
than a Kenyan-only endeavor.

However, the Monitor discovered the government merely
repackaged and re-released it, expanding the potential geographic reach of the
initiative while limiting it to health-related projects.

USAID also plans to spend up to $50 million to strengthen
Kenya’s county governments, as the Monitor previously reported.

Though the effort could help redistribute political power
across the African republic, whose national government is viewed as one of the
most notoriously corrupt in the world, the administration acknowledged the
process may inadvertently create 47 equally corrupt county systems.

The Monitor reported Obama also is embarking upon a
nationwide reading project that aims to improve the skills of children in tens
of thousands of Kenyan schools.

The administration furthermore launched new peace
initiatives in and around Kenya, despite acknowledging that chronic cattle
rustling and other cultural practices – such as killing rivals “to prove their
manhood or impress young women” – might impede progress.